Mediaboss Marketing

I will always argue for democracy. But I think we have to be quite careful when we seem to go around lecturing the rest of the world about these things.

Earlier this year Mr Umunna stormed out of a live television interview after being challenged over his failure to read a letter sent by the government to Muslim leaders.

At the time his aides played down the incident, but Mr Umunna revealed he was so angry he was told to "go to the loo and calm down". I was absolutely hopping mad, I was furious. I felt I was being attacked for not playing party politics with a very serious issue," he said.

In contrast to Ed Miliband, who has criticised "predatory" capitalism, Mr Umunna said that markets and business "are a force for good".

He said: "Ultimately the best way that we can close the equality gap and lift people out of poverty is by government working in partnership with business. God knows in China, and Im certainly not advocating a Chinese system, but their embrace of markets and reform has lifted millions of people out of poverty

Im really clear that business is the solution it is not the problem. On the whole, business is the way, through growing our economy, that we can deliver fairer outcomes. Any discussion about fairness or fairer rewards or distribution is pretty academic if you havent got businesses creating wealth, making profits, creating jobs and growth.

He praised proposals by George Osborne, the Chancellor, to give local authorities more control over health budgets, despite the fact they have been opposed by shadow health secretary Andy Burnham.

He said: Certainly if you want a more integrated model in health care I dont see how you can do that other than at a sub-national level. Now, in terms of the devo [plan] we havent seen the detail of what George Osborne has proposed. And Andy [Burnham]s quite right to point out the risks in that. But in terms of the principle I just dont think we can set our face against the idea of local decision making.

This is the interesting thing about what Osborne is proposing. Weve got to engage with this properly, intellectually. Is it a cynical move to cut the size of Government? Or is this is the progressive way, not necessarily a question of how much power is exercised but where it is exercised, more active institutions regionally. Ive talked a lot to Jon Cruddas about this over the years.

"If we want to build a new growth model and we want a progressive social policy, more integration in health and so on, decentralisation of decision making is the way to go.

Continue reading here:
Chukka Umunna: Britain is no saint and cannot lecture China about democracy